Jessie
Bartlett Davis (1859-1905) was born in
Morris, Illinois, a small town
not far from Chicago, in 1866.
She came from New England
stock, her parents having moved
to Illinois from Keene, New
Hampshire, where her father was
a school-teacher, leader
of the church choir, and instructor in music to the few
persons in the town who cared to
employ him in that capacity. One
day he fell in love with a
seventeen year old who
applied to him for a position as
school-teacher. They soon
married and started a family.

The Bartlett
family was large — four
girls and four boys, with Jessie
in the middle.

There was no
spare money in this household to
spend on a musical education for
Jessie, who began to
sing almost before she could
talk. When still a toddler she climbed
onto the melodeon stool to hit
keys and sing.

Her father taught
her all that he knew about
music, and by age twelve she was
the leading performer in every
musical event in the town. Her
voice, by her own admission, was "loud enough to drive
everyone out of the schoolhouse." She sang in the
church choir, and wherever else there was any one to listen.

At fifteen she
joined Mrs. Caroline Richings Bernard's
"Old Folks"
Concert Company at a salary of
seven dollars a week, and though
her voice was uncultivated, she attracted
attention. She was next given an engagement
to sing in the Church of the
Messiah in Chicago, and the
whole family moved with her to Chicago. While
there, she studied with
Fred Root, son of George F.
Root, a composer of popular ballads.

The
popularity of HMS Pinafore
provided her entry onto a larger
stage.
Will J. Davis, one
of
Jack
Haverly's managers, heard her sing
and persuaded Haverly to sign
her for the role of Buttercup
for fifty dollars per week -- an
extraordinary amount for an
unseasoned performer. At the end of the season,
in 1880, she and Davis married.

Will Davis
believed in Jessie's future, and advised
her to decline all further
offers until she had learned
how to best use her voice. He
took her to New York where she
became a pupil of Italian
pianist, conductor and composer, Signor
Luciano / Lucien Albite
(1824-1885) and Signor De Rialp,
a trainer for Colonel Mapleson
of Her Majesty's Theater.

Colonel Mapleson, at that time managing Adelina
Patti, heard Jessie sing and
advised her to study for grand
opera.

When the contralto
scheduled to appear as Siebel in
Faust with Patti was taken
ill, Mapleson persuaded Jessie
to take on the role.

"What
frightened me more than anything
else," said Jessie in
later years, "was the romanza that Siebel sings to
Marguerita. I was so afraid of
Patti, whom I considered a vocal
divinity, that I finished the
romanza without having dared to
look her in the face. You can
imagine my surprise when she took my face in her
hands and kissed me on both
cheeks. 'You're going
to sing in grand opera, and I'm
going to help you,' she said.

"Adelina
Patti's favor and influence did
more for me than two years of
hard study. There were only two
weeks left of the opera season.
During that time I appeared
twice as Siebel in Faust,
and once as the shepherd boy in
Dinorah."

Colonel
Mapleson offered to send Jessie to
Italy for three years
of study with celebrated
teachers to help her become a
world-famous singer. In return
Jessie was
to sing under Colonel Mapleson's
direction for three years.

Unstated personal reasons
[possibly her second pregnancy
and birth of
Willie Davis Jr.] made it
impossible for her to accept
this offer but she
did not give up the idea of
singing in grand opera. After
the birth of her son, Jessie
studied a year with Madame
LaGrange in Paris. On her return
she sang for a season in W. T.
Carleton's company.

Her principal
parts were the drummer boy in
The Drum Major and the
German girl in The Merry War.
The next season she appeared in the
American Opera Company, which
included Fursch-Nadi, Emma Juch,
and Pauline L'Allemand, with
Theodore Thomas as musical
conductor, then with the
reorganized National Opera
Company.

"That
was hard work," remarked Mrs.
Davis, "all for no money, and so
I got home to Chicago, tired,
sick, and discouraged, and
vowing that I would never sing
in public as long as I lived.

"While resting
in Chicago the manager of The
Bostonians came to see me to
talk about an engagement. Agnes
Huntington was their contralto
and they wanted to replace her.
I declined at first, but changed
my mind when he asked a second
time."

During her
first seasons with The
Bostonians, Jessie's
repertory was extensive,
including the Marchioness in
Suzette, Dorothea in Don
Quixote, Cynisca in Pygmalion
and Galatea, Vladimir Samoiloff
in Fatinitza, Siebel in
Faust, Nancy in Martha, Azucena
in The Troubadour, Carmen
in Carmen, and the
Queen of the Gypsies in The
Bohemian Girl.

Her success as Alan-a-Dale in
Robin
Hood, premiering at the Grand
Opera House in Chicago June 9,
1890,
kept her busy for several
seasons. She then appeared in The Maid of
Plymouth, In Mexico,
or, A
War-time Wedding, The
Knickerbockers, Prince
Ananias, and The Serenade."

"In 1896
Jessie estimated she had sung Oh,
Promise Me, from Robin
Hood, around five
thousand times. Robin Hood had
been performed 2041times, and she had
appeared in it all but
twenty-five of those. Oh, Promise Me always got an
encore, and often a double
encore, which brought the number
up to Jessie's Davis's estimate.

"I don't tire
so much of the acting of a role
as I do singing the same words
and music night after night,"
she continued. I sang Oh,
Promise Me until I thought they
ought to blow paper wads at me.
One day in Denver I said to our
conductor, Sam Studley, 'Sam,
I'm so sick of Oh, Promise Me
that I've made up mind to sing
something else.' 'Jessie,' he
said, 'I don't blame you!' So it
was agreed that on the following
night I would substitute another
of DeKoven's sentimental songs.
But they wouldn't have it. I had
no sooner started singing than
there were shouts from all over
the house of Oh, Promise
Me! 'We want Oh, Promise Me!'
I managed to struggle through
one verse, and then ran off the
stage laughing. Then Mr. Studley
struck up the introductory to Oh, Promise Me, and I went
back and satisfied the audience
by singing their favorite
ballad. It's an awful fate to
become identified with a single
song.

"Being a
singer is not like being an
actress. If you are a singer,
your voice must be your first
care. An actress, if she gets
over-tired, can go on and spare
herself. A singer cannot. An
actress can use less voice at
one time than at another. A
singer cannot. Over-fatigue, excitement,
anxiety, all affect the voice by
which the singer lives.

"I had my
grand opera experience. I wasn't
very happy in it, although I had
good roles to sing — once in a
while. I did not know how to
protect myself. I was young then
and too good-natured. I confess
that while the work in grand
opera was more to my taste, I
was happier in light opera, and,
after all, that is a great thing
in the world. Sometimes I used
to sigh for more serious work,
for a heavier role, and in that
way In Mexico came to
pass. I used to say sometimes
'Oh, I wish I could have a hard
part; I am tired of rigging up
to show my legs. I want
something to do that is hard to
do.' So in 1895 when In
Mexico was read they said,
'Well, here's Jessie Bartlett's
serious part.'"

"That opera
was, indeed, very serious, so
serious, in fact, that the
public would have nothing to do
with it."

Jessie died
unexpectedly at age forty-six of
chronic kidney disease.
Celebrated catholic priest of
Chicago, Father Dorney,
conducted her funeral and she was
buried at
Oak Woods cemetery in Chicago. She
bequeathed an estate to her son Willie
that with inflation would amount
to around a million dollars
today.

Jessie owned
a minority interest in the
Iroquois theater. The
exact percentage is not known
yet. She managed her
finances separately from her
husband's and, given her cash on
hand at the time of her death in
1905, in 1903 may have had a
substantial sum to invest, and
lose.

Jessie's Iroquois controversy

Two days
after the fire, Jessie was
quoted in newspapers as having made remarks to
the press that blamed the
Iroquois Theater fire on audiences who demanding ever more
spectacular and dangerous
theatrical performances. A
week later she vehemently
denied having made the remarks.
The truth will probably never be
known but to
me the remarks sound like something
that might have been said by a woman who was
a prima donna her entire adult life, perhaps
taken a bit out of context. Gwyneth
certainly isn't the first or only celebrity
to see herself as leading a hard, knock
life.

It must also be noted that Jessie was not in
Chicago at the time of the fire. Her
knowledge of the fire came through
Philadelphia newspapers.

Every
major paper in the country covered the
Iroquois fire, many with front page exposure
and many linear inches, but no papers
communicated the horror as thoroughly as
those in Chicago – that
would not yet have reached Philadelphia two
days after the fire.

A
few weeks after the fire, Jessie wrote to
her husband and advised him not to repeat to
anyone whatever it was he had just written
to her regarding others to blame for the
fire. His letters to Jessie in that
regard will not likely ever surface.
If any legally compromising letters remained
in her estate, Will or Willie probably
disposed of them. Her cautioning Will,
however, may have been influenced by her own
recent bad experience with the press.

Her warnings may also have been influenced
by by career and financial interests.
Jessie's career was on the wane, making her
dependent upon the
Syndicate for future
bookings. Had Will pointed fingers at
the Syndicate, he would have lost his job
as manager of the Illinois Theater and
Jessie would have had to go back to singing
in churches.

If you have additional
info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error, I would like to
hear from you. Chaos and communication limitations of 1903
produced many errors I'm striving to correct and welcome all the help I can get. Space is provided at the
bottom of stories for comments, or contact
me directly.